Carnival in Rio: 90,000 tickets sold and no signs from the Metro to the Sambadromo?
I’ve been ranting for years about the lack of signage on Caribbean Islands to help tourists.
I can understand this on many small islands. Locals are so used to the roads and know exactly where to go, that they can’t seem to appreciate that tourists get completely lost and confused trying to find their way around.
It took me over an hour to find Mahogany Run Golf Course on St. Thomas. I had given up and decided to head back to my hotel when I just happened to stumble on it by accident (our host explained that everyone has that problem and that we did pretty well considering…).
On St. Croix, it took over an hour to find our hotel since the one sign was now blocked by a tree (our hotel explained ‘everyone has that problem’).
In Puerto Rico, they advertise ‘Explore beyond the Shore’ – so I decided to take the ‘Ruta Panoramica’ across the central mountain range. Starting in Mayaguez, I couldn’t find any signs – so I used by boy scout skills reading a map, only to find myself right back where I started after an hour. Since I was traveling with a Puerto Rican, he started to stop and ask locals – this got us even more lost until we found someone who told us the ‘trick’. Since the signs had been placed for tourists traveling from San Juan heading west – anyone (like us) traveling in the opposite direction had to guess which fork in a road to take… and then look backward to see if there was a sign pointing in the opposite direction. This worked pretty well, turning back when no signs were found… until no corners had any signs at [...]
